


My Best to Bob Cratchit

by barelypink



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Christmas, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, M/M, Patrick Brewer needs a hug, a literal dead bird, a tiny scoop of magical realism, because that's how i roll, broken engagements, but more from A Muppet Christmas Carol, matching holiday sweaters, not the figurative kind, slight childhood bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:07:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27768781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barelypink/pseuds/barelypink
Summary: It's his first Christmas in Schitt's Creek and David hates everything. But on Christmas Eve, David is visited by the Ghost of Christmas who shows him scenes from the past, present, and future. What he sees has the potential to change the course of his life.That's right, y'all. It'sA Christmas CarolAU!
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Patrick Brewer/Rachel
Comments: 52
Kudos: 127
Collections: Schitt's Creek: Frozen Over (2020)





	My Best to Bob Cratchit

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver2020) collection. 



> Charles Dickens and I don't get along, so this is more of a loose approximation of the Christmas Carol story. It's more based on _A Muppet Christmas Carol_ because that's the only version I've seen and really, what other version do you need? I mostly picked this prompt so I could finally use this canon line as a fic title, which I'm seriously surprised no one has used before. 
> 
> Thanks to likerealpeopledo for beta help and for talking me off of the multiple ledges I got myself on.

The money was gone, to begin with. There was no doubt about that. But if David Rose required any reminders, he only needed to remember the incessant drip-drip-drip of the bathroom sink, the disconcerting squeaks of the ancient springs of his twin bed, or the distasteful fact that he now called a motel in the middle of nowhere his home.

Life was a fucking nightmare, to be brief. 

Hanukkah had passed with barely an acknowledgement among the Roses and now it was Christmas Eve. Though the town had festooned itself in garish display, the occupants of rooms 6 & 7 at the Schitt’s Creek Motel were decidedly devoid of any Christmas cheer. A family of grinches, every one of them, now that their wallets were two sizes too small. 

Alexis was softly snoring in the bed next to his, while David stared and stared at the troublesome cracks in the ceiling above his head. He doubted sleep would come to him tonight and the pills that once might have helped were long gone. David tapped his fingers against his arm and tried to concentrate on breathing in for five counts, out for five counts, the way Twyla had taught him at her yoga class. David felt full of oxygen, but was no closer to falling asleep. 

It wasn’t like David had ever really loved Christmas before, either; that wasn’t the reason for his insomnia. He wasn’t sad about missing out on expensive gifts — his dad was terrible at gift giving anyway and no amount of money could fix that glaring character defect — or mourning beloved family traditions. Aside from The Number, they really didn’t have any of those. David wasn’t even itching to get out of town anymore either, especially since his first attempt at escaping had been an unmitigated disaster. 

The Amish food had been good, at least. 

No, the problem was that David didn’t even know what he wanted anymore. Maybe he’d never actually known. Maybe his whole life had been a waste so far, after all. 

*

David was drifting somewhere between dreaming and awareness when he was startled back into consciousness by a bright white light. He blinked blearily at the incandescent glow radiating from somewhere at the foot of his bed. The light was intense and blinding. And yet somehow, Alexis breathed on, undisturbed. 

As David’s eyes adjusted, he could make out the shape of a person. The form seemed to suck the light into itself and after one long blink, David could clearly see a man standing before his bed, all chiseled jawline, salty white hair, and piercing ice blue stare. 

“Anderson Cooper?” David sat up and clutched his beige comforter to his chest. “What the hell are you doing here? In Schitt’s Creek? On Christmas Eve?”

“Am I here?” asked Anderson Cooper in that sure, authoritative voice of his. “Or am I just a figment of your imagination?”

“Do I get to pick?” David asked peevishly. “Because I’d rather take the option where I’m still asleep.”

Anderson’s lips twitched at the corners. “I’m real, but not in the way you think I am.”

David crossed his arms over his chest and tried to recall if he’d suffered any major head trauma lately. “So you’re not the Anderson Cooper who surprised me with a trip to the Seychelles and then broke up with me one hour into a three hour parasailing trip?” 

Anderson leveled a cool but pointed look at David. “I have many names and take many forms. I generally manifest into the person you most trust to tell you the truth. But perhaps I have misjudged this time.” 

David examined the facsimile of Anderson Cooper. It was an uncanny likeness down to the dark rimmed glasses and iridescent tie and perfectly cut suit. Anderson always did know how to dress well. And ex or not, David had always had a thing for Anderson’s confident, easy command of the facts. He’d laid out exactly why they needed to break up and David hadn’t had a single argument against them. He may have even thanked Anderson afterwards for doing it so neatly. 

So yeah, this all tracked. 

“All right,” David admitted begrudgingly. “You have a point. So who are you really and what are you doing here?” 

“I am the Ghost of Christmas. I am here to present to you scenes from the past, present, and future.”

“Of course you are,” David said sarcastically. “I hate to tell you, but Charles Dickens already beat you to that story.”

“Did he? Or did Dickens steal the concept from me?” Anderson responded bitingly. David thought he was pretty cranky despite being the Ghost of Christmas but who was he to judge? Anderson muttered something under his breath about opportunistic writers before turning his sharpened eyes back to David. "We must not dither any longer. The night is short and our time is precious. Rise and follow me.” 

David exhaled loudly and scratched his nose. “Okay, you may have forgotten, but If I don’t get at least six hours of sleep, no amount of eye cream will fix the bags under these eyes. Can’t we just skip the first two things and go straight to the future stuff?” 

Anderson glared at David. “No.”

David considered his options: stay in this flea-ridden, mold infested motel room while he fought to fall asleep again or follow Anderson Cooper’s spiritual doppelgänger into the world of shadows. The real Anderson had once told him to embrace the unknown. David still didn’t think it applied to water sports, but it seemed like sound advice for this particular situation. And he was curious about his future. It couldn't be worse than his present, after all. “Well, what do I have left to lose?” David said with a shrug, sliding his legs out of his bed. “Let's do it.” 

Anderson Cooper inclined his head with one small nod. David felt a tug at his midsection and he was whisked away in the blink of an eye. 

*

The first thing David noticed was the absence of cold. It must be springtime or maybe early summer in this world, which was unexpected because David had assumed Anderson would take him to one of the Roses' old Christmas parties at their former mansion. Instead, David found himself in an unfamiliar yard dense with green trees. He could almost feel the sun warming his skin through his thin pajamas, and he was reminded of how much he loved summer. A tangle of excited voices shook him out of his reverie and he saw a group of four boys. They were roughly around the age of nine or ten — though who could really say with children; they all looked the same to David — running together as a pack, their shouts echoing off the bark of the trees. 

Anderson gave the boys a curiously enigmatic smile before glancing over at David. “They can’t see or hear us,” he explained. “We are merely here to observe.” 

Watching the rambunctious boys, David felt his attention drawn to the boy with a rounded face and soft curls, the hair nearly auburn at the tips. He wasn’t the leader of the group, that much was obvious, but he was special, David could tell. A blonde-haired boy produced a wooden contraption and it wasn’t clear what it was until the boy put a rock in the slingshot and extended it back, one eye closed in mock concentration and exaggerated skill. The rock went soaring through the air with a whistle and to David’s surprise, it found its mark in one of the tree branches. A tiny ruffled thing fluttered to the ground below and the boys all ran to kneel at its side and poke at the small bird with grunts of pleasure and claps of approval for the marksman. 

Except the red-haired angel of a boy. 

He stood above them, eyes bright with unshed tears, devastation and anger etched with equal color on his still-baby soft features. 

“Stop!” he shouted. “You’ll hurt it.”

“Yeah, dummy,” a brown-haired boy with a tremendous assortment of freckles said. “That’s the point.”

The boy shoved his way through his friends, scooped the tiny thing up with his hands, and ran through the yard to the house next door. 

“Don’t be such a ninny!” the blonde-haired child yelled after the boy; his voice already dripped with disgust. David had forgotten how quickly children could learn to sniff out the weak, to snub them for the things that made them different. How quickly you could learn to be just like everyone else to not face such condemnation. 

Anderson and David seemed to be connected to the boy; their bodies followed him without even having to move their feet. It was a very odd feeling, but David was starting to accept that the whole night was going to be strange. The boy ran up a set of porch stairs and the back door swung open as if it had been waiting for him to return. A woman emerged and David knew instantly she was the boy’s mother. She was everything David had always imagined a mother should be. It was written in every minute detail of her from her stretchy elastic pants to her floral print blouse to the reddish glint of her shoulder length hair. She was soft everywhere Moira was hard and David loved her immediately.

As soon as the mother saw the boy’s splotchy face and gently cupped hands, she knelt down to meet him at his level, to talk to him like he was a person worthy of her time and consideration. David would have blistered apart under Moira’s gaze had she ever really looked at him like that when he was a child, but the boy seemed to be built of stronger stuff. It must have been forged through years of constant attention. 

“What do you have there?” the woman asked, gentle and kind. 

“Billy knocked this bird out of the tree with his slingshot. I think it’s hurt.” 

David did not care anything for birds except as an aesthetic decoration and then mostly the all-black variety like crows or ravens or maybe a regal peacock, but he could sense the boy’s anguish, could feel his despair in the way his voice wavered and hiccuped. 

“Let’s take a look,” the woman said, cupping her palms around the boys’.

The boy raised his hands and spread them open to reveal a bird with tawny feathers and a fluffy white breast; small and common but also strangely lovely.

“Oh, it’s a nightingale,” the woman whispered softly. “They’re such beautiful singers.” But David could hear the recognition in her voice as she prepared herself to face her son. The bird was clearly already dead. 

“Can we save him?” The boy’s hope was a delicate, precious thing. David couldn’t bear to hear the mother have to crush it, didn’t want to witness this break of spirit in one so young. But he was stuck there. He couldn’t move, no matter how badly he wanted to. 

“I’m sorry, my sweet boy.” The woman’s voice sounded almost like a lullaby, a sweet tune to mask the awful truth of the words. “But it’s already dead.”

David couldn’t watch anymore. He turned and seethed at his companion. 

“Spirit, Anderson...why are you showing me this?”

Anderson looked at David calmly. “Because the future begins in the past, David Rose.”

“I don’t even know this child. I don’t recognize any of these people,” David sputtered.

“Not yet, David Rose, but you will.” 

And the scene vanished, taking with it the illusion of warmth, and David felt cold once again.

*

They were now in an apartment that David didn’t recognize; a small one, but neat and tidy and well-decorated. In the corner was a small Christmas tree listing slightly to the left, a papier-mâché angel perched precariously at the top and a small pile of unopened gifts underneath. Before, David would have laughed at an apartment like this, with its one room comprising kitchen, dining area, and living room, but after a year in the motel, he almost felt jealous. There was a bedroom and bathroom off a short hallway and David could even see a small laundry area. What he wouldn’t give for his own washer and dryer. That thought appalled David, who used to send out all his clothes to be professionally laundered. But trying to hand wash his knits in the tiny motel bathroom sink had changed him. 

“And now for the present.” Anderson looked pointedly down the hall, but gave no other explanation. Typical. 

Out of the bedroom came a red-haired woman. She was tiny and bird-like with a delicate bone structure and her face was kind but her eyes were blazing. David automatically took a step back though he was nowhere near being in her way, even if she could see him. A man followed her out, and where her face was alight with a righteous fury, his was etched with regret. David knew what those kinds of faces meant all too well. He took another step back. The apartment was too small for this. 

“What’s the excuse going to be this time, Patrick?” the woman asked accusingly, turning on the man. Her voice was full of disdain. “Do you need time to focus on your career? You haven’t used that line in a few years. And you did just get that promotion so it’s probably a good time to recycle that one. Your parents will believe it at least.” 

“No, Rach—” the man, Patrick, began but she cut him off quickly. 

“Because heaven forbid you manage to have both a job and a relationship at the same time! Sometimes you make me feel like our relationship is more work than your actual job.”

David watched the man’s face fall apart with an eerily familiar pain. “Rach, come on…” 

“Is there someone else? I know you always claim there isn’t, and I never catch you looking at other girls, but you never initiate sex anymore, so I…”

The man looked particularly alarmed at that. “No, Rachel! I have never cheated on you. You know I would never do that.” 

The man was cute, David thought, though aggressively normal and unremarkable with his dad jeans and soft slate gray sweater and close-cropped hair. It was a weird thought to have when David was currently watching the man fight with his girlfriend. 

“Am I really that awful?" the woman continued. "Do I suffocate you so much that you always need to get away from me?” Her voice broke then, and the man’s face twisted even more. David didn’t know why he had to witness this. It was awful. He wanted to be anywhere but here. He’d much rather watch a dozen scenes from his own sordid past than this one heartbreaking one from a stranger’s.

The woman, Rachel, started to wrench a small engagement ring off her left ring finger, twisting and twisting and twisting until it slid free. She hurled it at Patrick with all her might. The man ducked, but the throw went wide; it never would have come anywhere close to him anyway, but he rose from his crouch with a sheepish face.

“Rachel,” the man repeated, voice soft and aching. “You know I love you. I _want_ to want to marry you, and I want to make you happy more than anything. But I can't shake this feeling that something just isn't right. I know that's not fair to you, but I’m trying. I promise you, I am trying.” 

“Try harder, Patty,” she said. “All this breaking up and getting back together again, that's what's not right! I love you, but I can’t keep doing this.” She turned on her heel and was gone. 

When David turned to look at Anderson, his face was grim but unreadable. 

“I don’t need to see other people’s misery,” David said testily, “to compare with mine. If this was your way of trying to teach me to be grateful for my trials, then you got it wrong. I’ve had enough break-ups to last a lifetime.” 

“You may see an ending,” Anderson said, not looking at David, "but I see a beginning.” 

David scoffed, but looked again at the scene still before him. The man called Patrick had recovered the ring his fiancée had thrown at him and was now sitting at the table, staring at it. He was chewing on his bottom lip and worrying his hands, rubbing the palm of his hand with his thumb, over and over and over, but his face seemed set, like a decision had finally been made.

“The man is the boy I saw in the first vision, right? The one with the dead bird.” 

“That is correct.”

David felt sick to his stomach. “Who is he to me?” he asked.

“Now you begin to see,” Anderson smiled cryptically and then the world dissolved again. 

*

The next scene materialized into solid form and David was surprised to see a version of himself, sitting on a sofa in a home David didn’t recognize. David didn’t know where they were, but the room was warm and inviting. There was a blazing fire with actual logs roaring in the fireplace, a real Christmas tree tastefully decorated with twinkling white lights and silver ornaments, and a fully lit Menorah in the window. Mariah Carey’s Christmas album played softly in the background. It was annoyingly charming. And absolutely perfect. 

It didn’t stop David from wanting to run away from whatever this vision was going to show him, because this David, future David, was _old_. David had a theoretical appreciation for the accumulation of time; he knew the years would catch up to him eventually, but seeing the proof right in front of his eyes was frankly just a bit horrifying.

This David probably wasn’t more than 40, but there were laugh lines around his eyes that David knew he didn’t yet have and there were several distressing strands of gray dotted through his hair (which was still as magnificent as ever and the hairline was not receding at all yet, thank God) but it was enough to make David want to cry. Except old David, future David, didn’t seem to mind that he was old. He actually looked happy, content, in a way David didn’t think he’d ever felt before. And this, despite the fact that he was wearing a chunky black sweater that was clearly handknit by someone of middling talent. And for all that the sweater was screaming “I’m made by hand! See all my dropped stitches!” in lumpy exaltation, it also looked soft and warm and cozy, and David wanted to reach out and touch it, just a little. 

And then the man, the one called Patrick, emerged from the adjoining room carrying two glasses of wine and wearing a matching handmade sweater. Except his was knit from a rich navy blue yarn that set off his pale skin like a luminescent bulb. It was completely incorrect, David reminded himself, to be wearing handmade _anything_ on his actual person or matching with _anyone_ like a tacky commoner but the truly bizarre thing, the thing that rankled David more than anything else, was that the older him didn’t seem to mind at all. And by the looks of him, neither did future Patrick. His hair was longer now with hints of the curls he'd had as a boy starting to peek through, and he wore an easy and affectionate smile. He looked so different from the hunched and haunted man David had just seen in the present. He seemed happy now, like he had finally settled into his skin and found that it fit just right. 

Patrick handed future David a glass of red wine and dropped a chaste but lingering kiss on his lips as he settled down on the couch next to David. And it was somewhat alarming to watch the way his own face, his older face, went completely soft and fond as his arm wrapped around the man. Patrick seemed to fit himself so easily under the crook of future David’s arm, like they’d negotiated this exact same maneuver countless times, like they did this all the time, and didn’t even have to think about it anymore. And then David saw them, the matching gold bands on each of their fingers, and the mantle full of photos of the two of them. There was even one that looked like them at their wedding standing next to his mother who looked rather fantastically like she had taken her sartorial cues from the pope. David felt his skin prickle with gooseflesh like he was a bird that had just been plucked. 

David took a step back. “What the hell is going on, Anderson?” 

Anderson merely looked at David with his silvery blue eyes and David wanted to punch him in his photogenic mouth. It was a very specific kind of torture to see a future that could not possibly be true. And that’s what this must be, David reasoned, a special hellscape created just for him, to taunt him with what he could not have. 

“It’s our fifth Christmas together, you know,” Patrick whispered and the awe and wonder was clear on his face and in his voice. He raised his glass. “Here’s to many more yet to come.” 

On the couch — a delightfully bold but tasteful midcentury modern thing that David knew his mind must have conjured up just to fuck with him because it was exactly the kind of couch he has always wanted — future David hummed in agreement and pressed a kiss to Patrick’s temple. “Did you thank your mom again for all the gifts?” 

“Yes, David,” Patrick said with a laugh, setting his wine glass on the wooden coffee table in front of them. “And I made sure to convey your sentiments that yarn of this weight is best left to the sheep, but I also told her that you had put your sweater on this morning when we opened the gifts and had somehow forgotten to take it off all day long.” 

“Traitor,” future David said, fond as hell, without the least bit of actual indignation. He pulled Patrick closer to him, so their lips were centimeters apart. “Lies. Slander.” 

Patrick’s eyes flickered to David’s lips just before he leaned in and kissed future David and well, current David had to look away. It was unseemly, to watch a thing like that, of you and your future spouse when you'd never been formally introduced to the guy.

Anderson, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the show. 

“You’re a real pervy guy, you know that, right?” David said, trying to glower at Anderson while avoiding looking at his older self and Patrick. There were still sounds, though, and it was mortifying to know that David could sound like that, like joy personified. And he knew, with some wretched piece of certainty he’d never felt before, that this was what love sounded like. 

“Aren’t you glad to see what your future holds?” Anderson asked in that dreadfully calming baritone of his. “To know that this awaits you?” 

“Bah, humbug,” David said miserably. “It’s a cruel trick to show me what I cannot have.” 

Now Anderson turned to level David with his full and knowing stare. David thought he liked it better when Anderson was watching future David make out with his husband like some randy teenager. 

“You still think this is about you.” 

“Well, yeah, duh.” 

“Why do you think I showed you scenes from his life —” he pointed to Patrick, who was smiling into another kiss with David. _Honestly, could they not take this elsewhere?_ “ — and not yours?” 

“I assume because this guy is going to be my happy ending.” 

“No,” Anderson said, clearly wildly unimpressed with David. “He’s not the answer to what’s wrong with your life. You are the answer for what’s wrong with _his_. But you’re not yet ready for it. Neither was he...until tonight. But you, David Rose? You're not yet the person you need to be.” 

David looked at himself on the couch again, at the way his hands were curved around Patrick’s jaw like he was more precious than a gift of frankincense or myrrh. He saw how his gold ring glinted like a ruby from the reflective glow of the fire, and he burned with the wanting, with the possibility that he could be this happy, that his future could be so impossibly beautiful. 

“I want this,” David whispered to Anderson. “I want him. What do I have to do?”

“That,” Anderson said, “is the right question.”

And then everything faded away. 

*

When David wakes up that Christmas morning, feeling like he'd been run over by a truck, he tells Alexis, “I had the craziest dream last night,” and then never thinks about it again. 

Except that he does. He thinks about it constantly, that there might be this person out there and that they could be destined for one another, could be each other’s happily ever after. David has never believed in miracles before and he would never have believed something like that could happen to him if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. 

Except it was just a dream, wasn’t it? An astoundingly vivid dream, but a dream nonetheless. It wasn't actually real.

Still, when Johnny harangues David about getting a job, David thinks about that future — the beautiful couch and him, kissing his husband by the light of the fire — and he decides to try, for maybe the first time in his life. He takes the job at the Blouse Barn even though it’s technically beneath him and, sure, he’s maybe a little too enthusiastic about implementing his vision before Wendy or the greater Elm Valley is ready for it, but he’s learning. When Wendy needs him to watch her step-daughter, the girl bleeds all over his bed but David remembers the sound of Patrick’s mother’s voice and the way she comforted her tender-hearted boy when he held a broken thing in his hands, and David finds the right things to say. He knows a trick for getting blood out, anyway. 

He and Stevie get over their awkward stage and David learns how to be an actual friend. It trickles into all his other relationships. He listens to Alexis instead of tuning her out, like he used to, and is shocked to discover that his sister is beautiful and vapid and daring — like he always knew — but that she’s also resilient and brilliant and brave. He supports his mother during her bid for Town Council and runs lines with her as she plots her grand comeback into acting. He helps his dad with the bills and listens to Johnny’s plans for the motel and David thinks to himself, “I’m ready for it.” 

And yet, Patrick doesn’t come.

The visions were skimpy on the details so David has no idea where his future husband might be right now. David only knows Patrick's first name and nothing else, so he has no hope of tracking him down on his own. But if this is his fate, this man and this future and a marriage and a ring on his finger, then David figures he shouldn’t do anything he wouldn’t have done before his Yuletide visit from the spirit of Anderson Cooper. He stays put, but he waits. He watches. He looks. He says the name _Patrick_ in his head sometimes, like a promise, especially on the bad days when he starts to lose hope. The days and weeks and months pass by. 

He lets Stevie talk him into applying for the lease of the vacant general store and then lets her talk him back into it when he loses his nerve after he learns the truth about his galleries. He needs a job, after all, to afford that house and the couch and that life. More than that, he wants to prove to his parents and himself and Anderson fucking Cooper that he can do this. So he forges ahead, despite the naysaying voices in his head, and makes the appointment to file his incorporation papers. 

He’s so focused on the business and its name — _does Rose Apothecary sound better than Rose Emporium?_ — that for the first time in a long while David’s not even thinking about his future husband when he walks into Ray’s house. And he doesn’t recognize the change in the air when Ray greets him warmly or notice the goosebumps ridged along his arms when he takes the ticket Ray hands him, and David doesn’t expect a thing when he turns around and sees him, in the flesh, for the first time.

“You must be David Rose,” the man says, holding out his hand with a warm smile. "I'm Patrick."

“Patrick,” David breathes, extending a hand. “It's so nice to finally meet you.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompt:**  
>  Hi! I’d love a Christmas Carol AU. Don’t mind whether it’s Patrick or David being shown past, present and future.  
> I also don’t mind if it’s more like Scrooged than Christmas Carol.  
> Don’t mind if the 3 guides or ghosts are SC residents (Ray for example 😉) or neutral.  
> Can be a they never lost their money au or they’re in Schitts Creek au. Or Patrick never made his break for freedom au. Or otherwise. Writers choice. Writer can deviate as much or as little as they want from prompt.
> 
> Thank you, Anonymous, for such a generously open-ended prompt. Hope you liked what I did with it!


End file.
